flamingo flower

a late spring blizzard that has blanketed us in 10 inches of freshly fallen snow has me reaching for household plants to photograph. it’s a funny thing about household plants, that we live with them but never really learn about them. have you ever googled “english ivy” or “spider plant”? see what i mean? we assume we know these members of our household, because they are with us every day. but we don’t know them at all. case in point, i just googled anthurium. and i learned that the air purifying qualities of anthurium have an effect on formaldehyde, ammonia and volatile organic gases. several anthuriums in a room reduce the harmful substances in buildings by more than 50% in 24 hours. it’s like discovering that your son, who spends all day on the couch at home watching youtube, has also discovered the cure for cancer in his spare time.

anthurium

food photography is hard

my stretch goal for in 2018 was is to add the occasional food photo, but do it in a STILL blog style. i thought it would be pretty straightforward–just treat the food as i would a nature specimen. isolate it on a white background. pick an angle that emphasizes some aspect of the subject, either the graphic form, or the natural beauty, or the ingenious design. all my usual tricks. but it is proving to be so much harder than that. i can’t tell yet why that is so. perhaps we are all too familiar with food products? or maybe it’s that there is so much food photography out there that it’s really hard to do anything new? i don’t know. anyway, i am struggling. in a good way. i feel challenged. i’m excited for the local growing season to start so i can start getting better subject materials. it is good to feel like an amateur again.

peeled granny smith apple

whatever makes you smile

a few months ago i read the book a gentleman in moscow by amor towles.  i have mentioned before how much i liked the book.  but i was reminded of it again today as i waited in line at my local post office. in the book, towles uses the expression ‘potted palm’ repeatedly. and every time he did, it made me smile. i can’t explain why, perhaps the alliteration, or perhaps a subconscious association of potted palms with gentile settings in tropical climates. whatever it was, it made me smile. so today, while waiting my turn at the post office, i eyed two large and mostly ignored potted palms at the end of a corridor. potted palms! i thought. i don’t know if stealing a potted palm leaf from the post office constitutes a felony theft of government property but if so, i am newly a felon. but a felon who has just given herself the opportunity to use the phrase “potted palms” half a dozen times, and who is smiling.

schefflera leaf (australian ivy palm)

too pretty

it’s possible to be too pretty. i have watched the struggles of some friends who were so pretty that they were eventually defined by their beauty, and couldn’t escape it to be something other than beautiful. i think of this ranunculus a little bit like that. this is my first photo of this species. i guess i have always just assumed that it gets photographed to death because it is so beautiful that the sight of it almost catches in your throat. after six years of daily STILL blog photos, here is my first encounter with ranunculus, a flower that now reminds me of the pretty girl in high school who never gets asked to prom, because everyone assumes someone else has, surely, already asked her. will you be my date, ranunculus? i think you’re pretty great.

ranunculus

eat the rainbow

my brother in law says he spent most of his adolescence on an orange diet. orange as in the color orange. the diet was mainly made up of cheez-wiz, orange fanta, and cheetos, with some kraft mac n’ cheese and cheez-its thrown in for their extra health benefits. i’ve heard that if you just eat the rainbow, taking in nutrients from foods with the widest possible variety of colors, your diet pretty much takes care of itself. but i’m not sure the inventor of “eat the rainbow” spent enough time accounting for the existence of starburst. or dots. or skittles. mmmmm . . . a skittles rainbow . . .

star fruit, pears, limes, apples, lemons, grapefruit, persimmon, oranges, pomegranate, blackberries, cranberries and various dried leaves